Everything else

American religion: less church and more options

The main study in this area is “American Religion: Contemporary Trends” from Mark Chaves and it states clearly that a great number of americans are changing their point of view about religion. From his first study, in 1972, to the last one, in 2011, some things have changed.

In his study there are some interesting points

although more than two thirds of american say they believe in God, less than a third go to church periodically and (this is really curious) they claim to go to the church more times than they really do it

confidence in religious institutions has declined more than confidence in secular institutions

to believe in God it’s becoming something diffuse for more and more people; there is a “God” who should have made the Universe but after all, nothing is clear

the traditional feeling of religious community where every one knows and helps each other is almost extinguished

decline in liberal Protestant denominations has been accompanied by the spread of liberal Protestant attitudes about religious and social tolerance

A few years ago the Gallup polling agency conducted a study on paranormal beliefs. Although the data is from 2001 they are still interesting because they compare the evolution of these beliefs over a decade. And the results are curious. The poll asked many questions to the Americans about their beliefs in different types of psychic and paranormal phenomena and the results are summarized in the following table:

Belief

Doubt

Unbelief

(datos en %)

Healing through psychic powers

54

19

26

Extrasensorial perception

50

20

27

If animals can be spellbound

42

16

41

Demonic possession

41

16

41

Ghosts and spirits

38

17

44

Telepathy

36

26

35

Alien visits

33

27

38

Clairvoyance

32

23

45

Communication with the dead

28

26

46

Astrology

28

18

52

Witchcraft

26

15

59

Reincarnation

25

20

54

Trance led by spirits

15

21

62

They compared that set of data with another one of 1990 and they discovered that, except belief in demonic possessions that had fallen over time and others like ESP and telepathy that had not changed, the number of believers in other religious (or at least not “physical” manifestations) had increased, in some cases more than 10%.

A subsequent survey with the same questions, also conducted by Gallup showed that in 2005 75% of Americans believe in at least one of the paranormal phenomena described above.

In the same way as it changed every aspect of our lifes, Internet comes with an avalanche of options for those who are losing their faith in conventional religion but still feel the need of stay in touch with “that”. You can find in the web a wide variety of websites with different offers for every kind of belief. Some are official websites of community churchs, some are video channels open to discussion about the existence of God (or atheism); some others are open boards where the “brothers” offer help for each others and even, other ones like the Rein Official site http://reincarnashown.com/ are ready to offer info about your previous lifes.